SSE
Security Service Edge, or SSE, is the delivery of network security controls from a cloud platform instead of from appliances in an office: secure web gateway, cloud access security broker, zero trust network access and usually data loss prevention. It is the security half of SASE, without the networking half.
The relationship to SASE is the only thing most people want clarified, and it is simple. SASE is the combination of software defined wide area networking and cloud delivered security. Take away the networking and what remains is this: a set of security services users reach wherever they are, rather than traffic being hauled back to a data centre to pass through hardware. Organisations that are happy with their existing connectivity buy the security half on its own.
What it changes in practice is where the inspection point sits and who runs it. Policy follows the user rather than the office, which is what makes it work for remote staff, and ZTNA inside it replaces the flat access a VPN grants with access to named applications.
The consequences worth planning for are consolidation risk and visibility. The platform becomes a single administrative surface that can see and reroute most of an organisation’s traffic, so the accounts that administer it belong in the highest tier of protection, and its availability becomes a business dependency. It also decrypts traffic to inspect it, which is a decision with legal and works council implications in Spain that should be settled before deployment rather than after.